I love reading books with Micah that describe a mother’s love for her children. So, I was more than happy to end February with Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown. In this story, a mother bunny follows her little bunny everywhere he runs, just to welcome him back home when he discovers that’s where he wants to be after all. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the illustrations were by Clement Hurd, the same as Goodnight Moon! We read Goodnight Moon back in November (you can find the study here), but it was also the book my husband and I read to Micah every night for the first few years of his life. So, it was nice to have yet another excuse to dig out our gently worn copy.
This opened up a whole Margaret Wise Brown study! We had tried and a series study with A Snowy Day (study found here) and absolutely loved it! So, I decided to do another with Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd. Micah loved finding references from Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon in every book! And he loved following little bunny in all his adventures.
The only thing I would change from our Runaway Bunny study is the timing. This is a beautiful love story, so I would place it at the beginning of February leading up to Valentine’s Day, rather than after. But really, Runaway Bunny is perfect for anytime!
Just a Recap…
I kept the structure similar to what I have been doing for these last few books, it really seems to work for us. We always begin our morning with our morning basket, a study time I call Morning Time. Essentially, I stage all of our morning time study stuff for the day or week in a basket which keeps me organized and looks super cute! Our Morning Time consists of reciting the catechism and Bible memory verses, introducing a new catechism question and memory verse with every new book, reading poems and verses from at least two different books, and reading from the Jesus Storybook Bible or Bible. I break up the readings with activities and songs. I’ll either do an alphabet, number or shape activity, and I like to introduce various styles of music, including Hymns. Additionally, I throw in some activities baby Skye can do, too! I do our Morning Time while we are all gathered around the table for breakfast and try to keep it short.
After Morning Time, we do our chores and get ready for the day. Then, Micah and Skye play for a little bit. I normally don’t have a set time, but sometime before lunch we start our daily lesson, beginning with the book we are studying. We only do school lessons three or four days a week, though we begin every weekday morning with Morning Time. The other days we’ll normally go to a museum or park if we don’t have anything else going on. I try to reserve time for free learning in a fun environment!
For the daily lesson, I continue with the Before Five in a Row curriculum and used the Homeschool Share lapbook for supplementary activities. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I detail the plan for our first year of homeschooling in Our School Year. But just to recap, we read a new story- which quickly becomes a favorite- every two weeks and use the Before Five in a Row guide to structure our lessons. We also supplement it with a lap book mentioned above, found here, and use other stories and nonfiction books, craft ideas, activities, etc. that enhance each lesson. I absolutely LOVE the Before Five in a Row curriculum and explain more about it and our homeschool style here!
That’s it in a nutshell, at least until I refine it again, and again… and again. Anyway…
Let’s Dig into Our Study!
Daily Morning Time
Bible Study
I introduced the third question in the Catechism for Young Children and John 3:16 for Micah’s Bible memory verse. For our Bible reading time, we continued with the Jesus Storybook Bible each day. One day on the first week, in place of the Jesus Storybook Bible, we read Jeremiah 31:3 to go alone with the lesson of the day. And one day during the second week we read Psalm 139 because it really captures the love God has for us.
Poetry and Rhymes
We continued working through Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes, for Skye really, and A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. Occasionally, I’d throw in some playtime rhymes we could tell with our hands, and other rhyming books we chose from the library about bunnies.
Alphabet
We didn’t focus on a particular letter this time. Rather, we worked through the alphabet sounds. At this point, Micah has an excellent grasp on his letters. So, I had him tell me the sounds of each letter and discover things that begin with each sound. I also continued with the ABC laundry activity found in the Homeschool Share lapbook, found here. We don’t do the ABC laundry every day, but it’s fun to do every once in a while.
Looping
In addition to these daily studies, we looped a few subjects. Looping just means doing one or two activities of a subject on your list a day, going down the list of subjects, and repeating the list until the week is over. So, if you have a list of four subjects, you can have several activities for each subject. And as you repeat the subject, you just choose different activities.
For Runaway Bunny, we had three subject areas, Art, Science and Math, with several activities within each. So, we were able to hit each subject area twice. Below I list the subjects and activities, in no particular order. There’s a ton of ways to study Runaway Bunny, these are just things we had fun with!
Art
For both art lessons, we studied the illustrations of Clement Hurd. Runaway Bunny’s illustrations are a mixture of colorless sketches followed by beautiful vibrant and bold colored pictures, similar to the illustrations in all his books of little bunny. We compared them to Goodnight Moon and My World, a companion to Goodnight Moon. It was fun to follow little bunny’s adventures through these stories, but it was also interesting to compare the similar artwork style.
For the first lesson, we discussed the artists style. Micah experimented with creating black and white pictures and colorful pictures. He also experimented with different media like using a pen to create the ink look of Runaway Bunny, colored pencils, crayons, markers, oil pastels, and various types of paints.
For the second lesson we compared the art within Goodnight Moon and My World. Within Goodnight Moon and My World, there are references to each other and Runaway Bunny. Together, we discovered the Runaway Bunny fishing scene and the cow jumping over the moon picture in each book. Then we discussed primary and secondary colors because all three books use such bold colors, specifically bold primary and secondary colors. Micah experimented mixing red, blue and yellow to get green, orange and purple.
In the lapbook for Runaway Bunny, there are bunny pattern activities. I used those within his art lesson to practice pattern recognition and sequencing. It didn’t really go with the lesson, but it was a fun activity to throw in.
Science
For the first lesson we studied the animals found within Runaway Bunny. Our lapbook had animal match cards for Micah to match them with the different animals throughout the story. We identified the animals, discussed their habitats, and learned a few characteristics of each. Specifically, we talked about their homes, families, eating and sleeping habits, and physical appearance.
For our second lesson we studied plants. There’s a part in Runaway Bunny when little bunny becomes a crocus in a hidden garden so his mother becomes a gardener, and little bunny becomes a bird so his mother becomes a tree. So, we talked about trees and plants. I kept our lesson pretty simple because Micah is so young, but you can dig into plants as deep as your little one wants to go! To supplement, we read The Giving Tree which was perfect to explain benefits of trees. And on a particularly nice day, we visited our local garden center and bought a few different types of indoor plants to care for. This has been great for developing responsibility, but it also gave Micah hands on experience from our lesson.
Additionally, we visited our library to check out Peter Rabbit for a scarecrow study. At the end of Runaway Bunny, there is a scarecrow in the garden they live by. So, after our garden study, we talked about scarecrows. What are they? Why do farmers and gardeners use them? Then, Micah made a scarecrow puppet from his lapbook and we read Peter Rabbit together.
Math
For both lessons we discussed shapes, specifically focusing on the circle and the roundness of things. For the first lesson we discussed the difference between a circle, sphere and disk. We drew a circle, and I brought out objects that were spheres and disks to compare. Micah didn’t quite understand the differences, but it was fun to hunt for disk-shaped and spherical objects throughout the house!
For the next lesson, we reviewed the sphere and disk lesson because its pretty complex for Micah. I had him hunt for spheres within Runaway Bunny. There are a few, but most notably… the moon! So, he hunted for spheres within Goodnight Moon, too and… you guessed it… this led to another moon and solar system study! I love to keep a nice balance between the lesson I aim to teach and nurturing his curiosity. This leaves so much room for Micah to take our studies where he wants to go.
But Most Important… Have Fun!
Runaway Bunny is yet another treasured book we have had the opportunity to add to our collection. It never ceases to amaze me how much we can get out of our stories! Seriously, I know I keep talking about it, but the Before Five in a Row curriculum is amazing! It’s so perfect for our pre-preschool studies! I just want to mention, though, that we don’t spend much time at all ‘studying.’ I work with Micah maybe 30 minutes to an hour, and not every day, mostly we are talking, playing, doing crafts or activities, or going places. It’s all about exposure and experience and getting his little mind thinking! Our goal is to have fun, and my goal is to make learning something fun that he wants to do and not just something he feels he must do to get good grades.
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